Disqus
Yep, it’s rant time again – open rant generator v1.0, enable tantrum networking bus, and start redundant shout and stamp processes!
To rewind for just a second – I was in the process the other day of buying some new phones for our house – probably DECT ones, and at least 2 handsets. You’d have thought it would be easy (I did originally), and the primary requirement was that the COLOUR matched the other CE (consumer electronics) in my living room – aesthetics matter after all!
It was only when I started browsing the pages of a popular home catalogue in the UK, that I realised that landline phone technology is about 10 years behind mobiles! What’s lacking? Well howabout this:
• colour screens*
• decent UI
• decent batteries
• separate base stations from handset charging bays*
• (network) sync for outlook or similar – contacts!!
(* to be fair, a couple of offerings did have these – but the majority did not!)
Mobiles evolved between 5-10 years ago to have all this sort of stuff as standard, or as a result of the type of product – yet the demand is just as strong for a landline. Especially annoying from my perspective is the phone vendors’ amusing notion that I might (a) type all the numbers I want to store in to the phone or (b) put my SIM in the handset so it could read the numbers off – whatever happened to USB cables, or wired/wireless networking?!
I appreciate that landlines might be a depressed breed right now, since many are using mobiles and internet phones, but, I would love to see the research that says they are dead – they aren’t – most homes in the UK have a landline of some form, particularly because ADSL broadband lines mandate a twisted copper pair in to the home – good enough (and charged for by BT) for a landline.
In fact the mobile handset vendors are missing a trick here. All they need to is re-purpose their UI, change the radio (in fact, scratch that, just take out the GSM/3G radio and leave the WiFi one in), whack in a base station, and you can serve the home landline phone market!
I find it beyond depressing that the technology behind landline phones is SO far behind where we are with mobiles – and don’t even get me started on baby monitors again, that’s going to be the subject of my next rant!
The bottom line here is that with some simple tweaks, a landline phone could be created that is (a) as functional as a mobile within the house/garden, (b) part of a home converged network, and (c) bringing on the evolution of technology in this area on by about 10 years!!! Arggggh!
About The Author
Ben Robinson
Ben is a 10+ year veteran of the Mobile industry – starting his career when SMS was a still a relatively new concept for most people (!), he has now consulted on everything from bleeding-edge Mobile content, to the next-gen accessories you might view it on. As a result he has a broad and deep knowledge in numerous areas of Mobile – from network operators to device vendors, to infrastructure and middleware vendors (not to mention content delivery) – and has worked for companies in all of these areas! He is based in the UK, a hotbed of activity for mobile, and recently became a father for the second time – as oppose to in his younger years when he was happy spend time tweaking all manner of mobile devices to 'nth' degree, he now looks for services and hardware that provide the most efficient, compact, and reliable improvements to his already manic life! It’s his opinion that Mobile solutions should be there to help to make your life better – if a particular solution (be it service or device) isn’t doing this, he believes you need to ask the very important question of why you continue to use it... His focus at IntoMobile is mainly on Mobile content, services, and infrastructure, particularly as regards the UK market – and with the occasional look at devices. Additionally, using his extensive experience in the industry, he will provide commentary on the industry at large, with regular (and hopefully thought-provoking) articles.
